'Peppermint' leaves a bad taste

Sept. 08--Riley North sees her family gunned down in a drive-by shooting at an amusement park.

Afterward, she's able to identify the gang bangers responsible in a police lineup and, later, in court.

Never mind that the shooting took place in the dark of night, that machine guns were flashing, that she was running toward her loved ones while getting wounded (and sent tumbling to the ground) by bullets herself. Riley somehow is able to clearly see all of the tattooed killers in the car. And, yet, there's no mention of her having super vision!

It's ludicrous.

Granted, this occurs in "Peppermint," an action film vehicle for Jennifer Garner that makes little attempt to be realistic. But it's somehow a lot easier to buy into Garner's Riley single-handedly terrorizing and killing off an army of drug dealing killers than her remarkable vision.

Nitpicking? Maybe. But this contrivance to advance the plot represents the kind of lazy storytelling that runs throughout "Peppermint," a lame attempt to give the latest entry in the lowly "Death Wish"-type vengeance genre a feminine slant.

The action scenes are OK at best. It's not Garner's fault: She's no Charlize Theron (think "Atomic Blonde") in terms of butt-kicking, but she holds her own as a convincing lean, mean fighting machine. The trouble is, she's stuck in a far-fetched, generic film that fails to take advantage of her charisma ("13 Going on 30") or depth ("Juno") as an actress.

It's as if "Peppermint" is less about Riley vs. a gang of killers than Garner vs. material that's beneath her. The material won, and that's our loss.

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